


Vision

by lasergirl



Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Vision

_**OUATIM: Vision**_  
**Title:** Vision  
**Fandom:** _Once Upon A Time In Mexico_  
**Rating:** PG  
**Characters:** Sands/El Mariachi  
**Notes:** 'Dead Man'-verse, Sands as a visionary. Weird.

  
After a few drinks, Sands begins to see.

He doesn't see shapes or colours, or the people around him in the bar. Or even the cigarette smoke trailing lazily up into the air, tracing intricate mystic patterns. No.

After a few drinks, Sands begins to see thoughts and feelings. Dangers.

It isn't something he's able to control. (There were very few things about him he was unable to control in his youth. He has become this man now because of them.)

His superior officer in the CIA once told him he had spooky hunches. Vague dreams, feelings, a taste on his tongue, that would lead him to the answers. He once found a murdered little girl's body in a dream, and when he told his boss, the man had gone pale as a sheet. The place, the position specified, everything was exactly as Sands had seen it.

"You didn't kill her, did you?" his superior asked him. Sands, pale and young, still just out of The Farm, still with zero kills, shook his head and vowed never to sleep again.

Of course, that never worked. If his attention wavered, if he looked away from his reflection for a split-second, the images flooded into his head and he saw too much of everything.

When his eyes were scraped out of his skull in Mexico, he thought "Maybe, finally, some peace." And for a time, he slept.

But after a few tequilas and a few beers in a shady bar, the metallic taste returned to the back of his tongue. Sounds around him were too sharp, so sharp they cut his eardrums and made his senses bleed. He found himself stumbling outside into the cooler night air, where at least he could breathe a few breaths and try to wipe the nervous sweat from his face.

His eyes leaked blood now, instead of tears. He had been resurrected under a full moon, in an ancient crypt by someone whose hands were roughened and scarred by time and hardship. Someone whose voice was an undercurrent, who didn't say much but meant everything.

And then Sands saw him.

He saw through lightning flashes, brief electrifying moments of horror, black and white, stark frozen images burning into the nerves he didn't have anymore. The Mariachi walks a street. Golden dust at his feet, the hot sun burning the back of his neck. Flash. Three men get out of a car and move towards him. They all have weapons trained at his forehead. Flash. There is no hope for him. The blood spills into the golden dust. Snarling clouds of dust wet into ropy licks of blood, splashes across the sidewalk and road. Flash. El lies dying the the sun.

He finds a scream is tearing its way out of his throat, his hands are clenched into palmfuls of gravel, and he is on hands and knees at the mouth of the alley. Ingloriously, he throws up the shotfuls of tequila he paid for in the bar, spits his cigarette into the pool of shadow at the wall. Sands wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the slime evaporating across his skin, cooling in the kiss of the night air.

Shit. El.

He knows the way back to their small villa by heart, would know it any time of the day or night, but tonight he can barely walk a straight line. Buildings are not where they are supposed to be, and he knows once or twice the rush and breeze from a passing car indicates he's strayed into the road. He's lost his cane, the universal symbol of a blind man, somewhere in the alley or wherever he brought up his night's entertainment. Without it, he's just some drunken fool who any thief could roll for an easy peso.

Sands collapses onto a hard step, the lightning flashes blowing his brain apart. El. He sees El dying, in the hot sun. His blood like snakes, flowing downhill. He finds himself crying, and licks his fingers, knowing the tears are his blood. The copper taste comes off on his tongue like the scent of guitar strings on El's fingertips.

It is then that strong hands shake him, rouse him from the ecstatic stupor he's in, pull him upright. And he'd know those hands anywhere.

"El," he croaks, unable to make the words form on his bloodied tongue, "they're going to kill you."

"Not possible," El says, though he himself isn't quite sure. "Already dead."

What El doesn't understand is that Sands knows these things. And he'd tell him but he can't speak. The blood tears roll down his face like rainwater, and El wipes them away with his thumbs. In the morning, maybe he will tell him, for now....

It's too much for his abused body, and Sands passes out in El's arms, the message of warning on his lips.  


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


End file.
